Amid the prevailing hustle culture that pervades online discourse, there is this perception that not finishing something is a sign of deeper, systemic rot. It is, as I’ve come to understand it, proof positive that the incompleter is going nowhere in life. Or at least in between nowhere and somewhere. But this is untrue. They are going elsewhere.
The person who quits has the freedom to move. They aren’t forced, by some internal, tyrannical mechanism to finish that 1700-page book on the maritime history of The Dutch Antilles. Their loyalty is to their own sense of purpose and patience. Their attention guides them into new territories, free of social pressure.
The way we think about incompletion is all wrong. When someone leaps out of a small plane the act of pulling their ripcord and watching as a rolled-up parachute unfurls from their backpack, inflating quickly and slowing their descent, is most certainly an incompletion. They can’t fly, after all. You don’t see birds engaging in similar hedging when flying south for the winter, reattaching their wings to handmade hang gliders somewhere over Georgia. But aren’t we happy they didn’t complete the fall? I guess that depends on how well you know them.
When normal people, devoted members of the hustling elite, are subjected to a bad meal, they take it. Not incompleters. They get up, maybe paying for the check, maybe not, and walk out the front door. Why bother waiting for dessert?
If there’s one secret to not following through on things, it’s obviously
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